In June 2015 in Northern Ireland, more than 200 Alliance for Choice activists (including me) challenged the PSNI to arrest us after we admitted we’d broken the law on abortion. Zero arrests were made.

All of the prurient details of the recent disgraceful case, where a 21-year-old was convicted and given a three-month suspended sentence for taking abortion pills she bought online, have been documented in this newspaper and others, some even going so far as to suggest a 10- to 12-week foetus is a “baby boy”. I’ve had a miscarriage at 10 weeks and what I lost could no more be described as a baby as a ball of wool could seriously be called a jumper.

If the prosecution and the commenting masses are to be listened to (something I am not remotely advocating), there were many other options for this young woman without means, rather than the illegal online DIY remedy she turned to. As an abortion rights activist in Northern Ireland, I have encountered most of these suggestions before, so here I will graciously lay out the brilliant options that are so helpfully offered to people who want an abortion:

Because as a society we just ADORE women who give away their babies. And adoption is super easy: nine months of unwilling pregnancy is a riot of exciting emotions and organ-stretching, calcium-draining delight, not to mention the weight of endless bureaucracy. Who doesn’t want to be an incubator for someone else against their will? It’s so hard to understand why millions don’t just go for this simple solution.

Option 2: keep the baby

Because babies are a punishment for sex before marriage (God said), but just for women, because men don’t get punished for any kind of sex ever because that is natural law. Also, society adores teenage mums nearly as much as it loves women who give away babies, so prepare for a few years of tabloid shaming. And watch out for welfare cuts, because babies don’t really cost that much to rear, and you should have thought about that before you got pregnant etc.

That way you can combine a holiday and health treatment all in one, but it will cost you more than a fortnight on the Costa del Sol and you won’t even get sunburn. You may also have to lie about where you’re going and not pay your rent to afford the flight, all the thrills of living on the edge, even if you have the Abortion Support Network to help you. Also travelling back while feeling the shakes, cramps and bleeding just adds that extra dangerous frisson to the journey.

Option 4: don’t have sex in the first place

Time travel notwithstanding, the option to not have sex is a tricky one, because rape exists in all societies. We also know that abstinence-only sex education actually increases the likelihood of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections due to the large gaps in contraceptive knowledge such an education leaves. We really love creating logical paradoxes in NI because of religion. It’s almost like we’re experts at it.

Option 5: use contraception

We all know that contraception never fails; the pills work even if you have a nasty gastric flu, and increasing your body’s intake of hormones is never problematic. This is definitely the best advice, as only 57% of young women accessing abortions were using contraception at the time of conception, so obviously people really need to know this Top Tip™ for non-pregnancy.

Option 6: form an elaborate underground militia of feminists

They must be ready to overthrow the patriarchal overlords of the kingdom and replace them with anarcha-feminist replicants, who will force all men to account for every spilled seed and allow women to walk on their own after dark in safety and make abortions free, safe and legal for all! Oh no, wait, that’s just a wild dream I had last night.

Pregnancies happen through bad timing, good timing, luck, bad judgment, or years of heartache and trying. Some unintended pregnancies become wanted, but for the rest, abortions are necessary, even life-saving. We need to trust women that they know what is best for their own lives. Yet Northern Ireland, a society so bogged down with concerns about equal and fair representation, has no parity of esteem for us. A suspended sentence for safe, self-induced abortion, where a woman’s privacy was so invaded by the police and by the state (not to mention her judgmental flatmates who dobbed her in) is an international disgrace.